Empowering growth through mentorship: insights from Liesbeth Von den Busch

Liesbeth Von den Busch, Senior Manager of Talent Development at VF International, shares her perspective on the transformative power of mentorship. With a wealth of experience from one of the world’s largest companies, Liesbeth emphasizes how mentorship benefits both mentors and mentees alike.

Please introduce yourself and your role within your organization

I’m Liesbeth Von den Busch, Senior Manager of Talent Development at VF International. VF Corporation is one of the world’s largest apparel, footwear including Vans®, The North Face®, Timberland®, Eastpak ® and Dickies®.

Can you please explain the role of a mentor?

We all learn from our own experiences (including our own mistakes). The role of a mentor is to allow others to also learn from other’s experiences, your experiences. Helping them to learn form our mistakes, sharing insights in different ways of doing things and challenging their thinking. At the same time, it’s an invaluable opportunity for the mentor to learn from the mentee and gain different insights from them.

In your opinion, why is being a mentor important and what are the personal benefits?

Mentorship is truly valuable for both the mentor and the mentee. Being a mentor makes you to think about how you do things, why you do them that way, how you build upon your strengths, how you got to where you’re today, what’s driving your success, how you learned to work around your pitfalls, etc. Reflecting, sharing your learnings with others and discussing their thoughts and questions, supports their career development whilst also increasing your self-awareness and exposing you to new people.

What are your goals as a mentor? What is the single most important thing you want to achieve when working with your mentees?

As a mentor I want to understand what’s driving the mentee, their key strengths and aspirations. Those insights are for me the starting point to help them considering different perspectives & ways on how to get there and sharing from my own experiences. Each situation and person is different, so it’s important to share, provide different perspectives and encourage the mentee to select what they believe is most helpful to them, to try new things and get out of their comfort zone.

Do you have a specific mentee in mind who you felt you really made a difference to? If yes, please share your experience.

One of the mentees felt stuck in her career. She was clearly up for something new, but wasn’t clear what it could be and was afraid of the challenges & uncertainty change might bring. Breaking things down in little steps, sharing insights in other’s career paths, considering different options, understanding what was driving her most, learning from other’s experiences, thinking about little steps to move in different direction, … gave her clarity on how to further build her path and finally broad her to an area where she is thriving again. Often providing mentees with some structure, someone examples showcasing ‘yes, it’s possible’ and encouragement, makes all the difference for them.

What do you think about reverse mentoring?

Likely the world has never been changing as fast as it is today. It’s important to keep on learning, to continuously challenge yourself and to enrich yourself with experiences & insights of others. I strongly believe reverse mentoring is invaluable to learn from younger generations or from anyone with a different business or life experience. We can all learn something from each other! It’s just about being curious, daring to be vulnerable and learning continuously & consciously.

Who would be your next ideal mentee?

To me the ideal mentee is anyone who’s curious, open to share, committed to grow (even if the path is not fully clear yet), taking accountability & ownership, willing to try new things and reflecting on their learnings. This mindset drives trust, engagement and committed, and truly fuels growth for both the mentee and mentor.